


Circle of the Sun

by cryogenia



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Sensuality, very brief mentions of infertility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28931640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryogenia/pseuds/cryogenia
Summary: Nyx is the most powerful female investor in the world; the chairwoman of Hades Holdings and one of the reasons they now operate in fifty-six countries.She is powerless in Persephone’s arms.
Relationships: Nyx/Persephone (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 41
Collections: Hades Rural Dionysia Exchange





	Circle of the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neriene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neriene/gifts).



> Thank you so much for this lovely prompt! I also adore Nyx and Persephone so very much, and it was an interesting challenge to think about them in a modern setting. (There was actually a ridiculously long backplot outline for this, even though it mostly turned out to be schmoopy.) I love the idea that they're both two older women just now figuring out how much they really wanted to be together.

They say there are only four types of people in the world: those who rise early, those who sleep late, those who carefully follow the sun, and those who none (or perhaps, any) of the above. It is a fashionable theory, of late. Nyx has read about it in breathless tech-bro biohacker articles, dogeared it in better-sourced literature from her doctor. 

Owl, skylark, or crow; bear, lion, or wolf. Find your chronotype in this five minute quiz. Nyx has never been any of the above, though she sees the “lifehacks” over and over in the dark, in the chipper, desperate posts from the other insomniacs on LinkedIn.

Persephone, beside her in this cosy, not-even-a-queen bed, needs no such thing. She sleeps when she wants to; when the sun’s up, she rises. Her clocks are buried behind an overwhelming number of ficus trees and overwintering potted geraniums. Persephone doesn’t know that she sings in her sleep: the tiniest whistle that slips out with each breath and makes it impossible to do anything but smile.

Nyx doesn’t know why she needs this, in truth. She’s never been the type to sit up watching a lover sleep. She’d thought it was a relief giving up in her twenties. The company had been taking off, and lunch dates were ever nothing but tedious: ambitious, self-important men making a point of penciling her in. Like her parent before her, so she would be: welcoming her children through donor sperm and au pairs. Staying up in the parlor to stitch toys while she catches up on the after-hours prices. 

She is far too old now, for children. There is no more biological clock left to tick. But she looks at Persephone sometimes and thinks of it. What could it have been like, if Persephone had been in the hospital to meet Zagreus. How precious his tiny fingers would have been, lost in the thick of Persephone’s hair. 

If she could have known, that last implant _hadn't_ failed. 

If it could have been _different_.

Even in dark mode, it seems she has tilted her phone screen too much. Persephone inhales deep, no longer whistling, tilting her chin up as if following the sun.

“...Nyx?”

“I am sorry,” she says. “I did not mean for you to wake.”

“Mm-mhn.”

Persephone’s eyes are just as beautiful in moonlight as they ever are in day. Sleepy, brilliant crescents urging her to stay.

Nyx slides her phone reluctantly into the jungle that is the nightstand, wedging it somewhere between a spider plant and ten new, nearly identical photos of Zagreus. He can never decide which ones he wants Nyx to print. Persephone always keeps every last one of them, strung up with little hand-painted clothespins. 

Zagreus _(12/27)_ , competing in his very first ‘Polar Bear’ 10k. Zagreus _(1/6)_ , in the hospital with an infection caused by a blister from that same race. For all the therapies his father has paid for over the years, Zagreus’s immune system will never be ‘right’. He sends Nyx with everything, both the good and bad. It is the best Nyx can do for the both of them to sustain that exchange.

Nyx slides down her slight pile of pillows, burrowing her way properly into the bed. Her back is not the graceful curve it used to be; her neck protests if she sits up without some padding behind her shoulders. Her thick breasts, stretch-marked and pendulous, no longer feel as comfortable at rest. Persephone still looks at her like _Nyx_ is the wonder, like the stars in the sky are hiding somewhere in her hair.

“I will be here,” Nyx promises. “If you would like to go back to sleep.” 

Even if it is her custom to prowl. Persephone’s floorboards creak far too much.

Persephone smiles.

“I know.” 

They lay there a moment, side by side, just breathing. Persephone doesn’t ask what Nyx is thinking. She understands that sometimes it is difficult to answer. There had been times back in the old days when they had stayed in comfortable silence for the better part of an afternoon, taking high tea at one of Zeus’s more discrete Crowne Plazas. 

Nyx in her dark, fluttering McQueens and Persephone head to toe in frills; classic goth and pastel goth, while the all socialites gossipped and stared. They did not realize it was Persephone who had finished Nyx’s squirrel skull necklace, how she was the first one who had taught Nyx to clean bone.

Turn a heavy flower pot upside down in the garden, so insects can get in but scavengers must stay out. Catch bugs for all of Nyx’s children, even as she mourned the stark lack of her own. Persephone had always seen the beauty in all things, from spring to winter, from the twilight to the dusk.

Persephone rolls up onto her side now, twisting toward Nyx like a flower seeking sun. That tiny smile is still playing on her lips, making the happy crows-feet crinkle at her eyes.

“Persephone,” Nyx whispers, not because there is anything she needs, but because Persephone likes to hear it. In this town, under cover, she is ever ‘Josephine’; ‘Seph’ at the gas station is the closest she dares as long as her mother yet lives. It is a secret, deeply precious name.

Persephone slides an arm out over Nyx’s chest, curling her fingers against one heavy breast. Nyx can feel them spreading out, expanding with her as she arches her shoulders back and _breathes_.

“Persephone,” she sighs again, like a prayer.

Her beloved’s fingertips ghost against her in sweet circles, and Nyx is old enough now not to be embarrassed at how easily she shivers.

Persephone wiggles closer, fitting her body all the way along Nyx’s. Her head tucks into Nyx’s shoulder and she hums a soft, self-satisfied tune. Everywhere that her fingers tease tingles like lightning. 

“Since we’re up,” she says. “If you’re up for it?”

She sounds so very proud of her silly play-on-words. Nyx can only nod her head. 

“Yes,” she breathes. Any way Persephone wants. Anything that Nyx has left to give. She never thought that she might need this, but she does, and she would spend every dime she has if it meant buying back the seconds they missed out over the years.

Persephone’s fingers trace higher on her breast, following the contours around her nipple. It pebbles almost immediately into a radiant, aching point. A wonder, that Persephone understands it’s about all she can take. After the twins were born, her breasts had turned so tender that sometimes Nyx couldn’t touch them at all. Maybe she’d told Persephone. Maybe Persephone is just very observant. It feels like liquid fire either way, heat enough to warm her bones, fast enough to be consuming.

Persephone presses a soft kiss to her shoulder. 

“Beautiful,” she says. 

In a two-day old blow out, with no gown at all. Nyx is ‘beautiful’. 

“As are you,” Nyx whispers. 

Nyx closes her eyes and lets the feeling take her.

Persephone expands her reach, seeking lower. She likes to trace the silvery stretch marks on Nyx’s belly, one by one like she’s painting them. They never faded after the twins, and Zagreus’s surrogacy only deepened them. ‘Tiger stripes’, Persephone says when she is in a mood. She has held Nyx down and followed them with her teeth, nipping until Nyx’s belly shakes with laughter. 

Right now she’s keeping her fingers feather-light, just exploring. She keeps her fingernails so very _short_. 

Nyx hikes in a breath, wondering: is it because of _her_? Does she keep herself ready, thinking, at any moment Nyx could walk through that door? 

Does Persephone sit up waiting for the weekend, touching herself in her battered old armchair, imagining she has Nyx on her knees?

Nyx would do it for her in a heartbeat; Nyx would go down for her anytime, anywhere. She has never thought of herself as ‘submissive’, but for Persephone, all she wants to do is worship.

If her lover will let her. Persephone’s fingers skim lower, raking through the coarse hair just at the very top of her mons. Nyx scarcely recognizes her own voice when she moans.

Persephone laughs, low and breathy, the way she does when she’s turned on.

“Yes,” she breathes, drawing the word out into a hiss. 

She draws her fingers up and down along Nyx’s mons, massaging gently down over her split. Nyx twitches her hips up without meaning it, trying to ride her fingers. That feeling. Like warm water trickling between her lips, wrapping around and drawing inside. Over and over, Persephone’s hand following her motion but not quite letting her get a digit where she wants it. 

When she cracks an eye open Persephone is smiling at her, and the only word she has is _please._

Persephone pulls away for a moment, shifting to reach for the nightstand on the opposite side. There’s the familiar click of a bottle being uncapped, and then her beloved is back, reaching over her with a cupped hand. Nyx doesn’t get as wet as she used to, but the KY makes it feel like nothing’s changed at all. Persephone cups her hand against Nyx’s mons, finally, finally pressing up and in, and the relative chill of the lubricant leaves her gasping and boneless on the bed.

“Sorry!” 

“It is all right,” Nyx reassures her. The farmhouse gets cold at night; she knows this. Would that Persephone _let her_ buy a better place. She and Zagreus both now have tried. Persephone is too proud of having her own home, that she sustains now without any ties to her family’s money.

Persephone’s strong fingers follow the tingling cool, and Nyx loses every thought in her head.

It is different than when she uses a toy on herself - more immediate, somehow. More intense, because it’s not as strong as vibration. On her own, Nyx has timed it to where she can come in four minutes: efficient, effective. A good hit of stress-relieving dopamine. When Persephone touches her, it’s like she never knew her body at all. 

“Yes,” she hisses, tensing her thighs on a jerky stutter. Persephone’s fingers frame her clit, squeezing it. The chill is rapidly sublimating to heat.

Nyx whimpers and squirms as Persephone teases her up and down. She dips just one finger in and gets her wetter on the inside. Her nipples are so stiff they burn and yet the only thing she wants is Persephone on top of her, inside of her, everywhere.

Nyx is the most powerful female investor in the world; the chairwoman of Hades Holdings and one of the reasons they now operate in fifty-six countries.

She is powerless in Persephone’s arms.

“Please,” she says again, tugging at Persephone’s shoulder. Her free hand is too shaky to catch hold, but she tries. 

She _burns._

Persephone takes pity and pushes herself up on one elbow, leaning up to kiss at the curve of Nyx’s neck. Her chapped lips feel like a brand.

“Shh,” Persephone tells her. “I’ve got you.”

She curls two fingers inside and lets Nyx feel them, callused and lovely and not-quite-enough. When Nyx cries out and tenses, Persephone pulls them back against the grip of her muscles. When she thrusts them in again, into that tightness, it sets off a molten ache through Nyx’s core.

“I’ve got you.”

So many sensations all jumbled up together. Persephone’s perfume, lavender cut with smoky, dark espresso. Persephone’s thumb, swirling over her clit. It’s like there’s a line drawing down between her hips, focusing everything into that single point. Nyx trembles beneath her beloved, calls out for her. Sobs. Her hair is everywhere around her, clinging to her skin.

“Come for me,” Persephone whispers.

She wants to. She’s so close. Persephone’s fingers are a solid ache inside her and she is so tense she can no longer even buck her hips.

Persephone mouths at her neck again, right over her heartline, and Nyx is undone.

It hits her in the backs of her glutes first, the bottoms of her thighs, in waves - all her muscles releasing at once and then pulling inward. Persephone’s fingers grow incandescent inside her and then the heat is everywhere pulsing through her core. It lasts and lasts and she doesn’t know what to do with it. The only thing that she can do is shake.

Persephone stays with her, still inside her, as she comes down, calming her with little butterfly kisses. 

“There you are,” she breathes. “There you are.”

Nyx ought to be kissing her. She ought to be offering to roll over and reciprocate, like she has read. Like Persephone has taught her.

Strangely, she can barely move.

“Feeling better now?” Persephone asks, a hint of mischief in her voice. Nyx’s eyelids must weigh a thousand pounds. When Nyx looks at that beautiful grin, she can scarcely see.

“Yes,” Nyx sighs. She sounds well - as exhausted as she finally feels. When she tries to reach for Persephone, her beloved only nudges her hand away.

She’s been _tricked._

Nyx is not certain she’s ever loved her more.

Persephone wipes her hand on the far edge of her own sheets and snuggles back up to her, already staking out the majority of Nyx’s pillow. She looks so utterly pleased with herself that Nyx can’t help but match her sleepy smile.

“Sleep,” Persephone commands, a tiny bit imperiously. Almost like her mother for once, although Nyx would rather die than say it. “You can get me in the morning.”

“As you wish,” Nyx says. As always, she is humbled. 

She cannot know if it will be different this time - if Persephone will ever change her mind, if Nyx or even Zagreus, can get her to come home. 

If perhaps they have it all wrong, and _they’re_ the ones who ought to be coming home to her.

Nyx sleeps, and for once, she dreams.


End file.
